Job hunting using LinkedIn

1. Optimise your profile: "Optimise" is a key buzzword, coined by Social Media geeks to impress the less informed. By engaging in the optimising process, simply include keywords that are most relevant to your skills and experience within your profile. You can add these in your summary and job description section to aid the visibility of your profile and ensure that it reflects more often in relevant searches.

2. Privacy settings: Be cautious and aware of those within your network. If your current boss is a member of your network and you don't necessarily want him or her to know you are looking for a new job, you will need to be selective in arranging your privacy settings. However, if this is not an immediate concern, then it's best to be open and easily identifiable.

3. Screening your profile: You can confirm who is screening your profile by allowing others to do likewise. This information can be viewed when you click under "Who's Viewed My Profile" on your profile page.

4. Make it personal: Although LinkedIn is a professional site, it is highly advisable to ensure that your profile is as personal as possible. It is vital to portray a glimpse of the real person behind the profile. Therefore, be sure to use the first person when you write your profile; this communicates confidence. Understand and appreciate that your profile is your life story; engage in the use of storytelling to strengthen your case. This will ensure a distinctive profile and extend a better insight to the reader into you as a person.

5. LinkedIn recommendations: Recommendations from people you have worked alongside, carry much weight. To a potential employer, a LinkedIn recommendation is a reference in advance and can greatly assist in securing that first, sometimes elusive, interview.

As with most professional relationships, recommendations are often mutual. Therefore, it's no surprise that many individuals will provide recommendations for each other. The fact that your reputation is tied to any recommendation you write, is indeed an incredibly significant incentive to keep words honest, as well as defensible.

6. The power of LinkedIn groups: There exists groups for every topic and industry, which enable you to network specifically with applicable peers and specialists. But did you know you can directly message most group members? What's more, you don't have to be a first degree connection in order to achieve this. An ideal way to bring you into contact with those in the know, it is also the perfect platform to ensure that you are noticed when attempting to make a career move. Harness the power of LinkedIn groups.

For further information, go to www.communicate.co.za.